European Commission in legal challenge over failure to release information on biofuels' environmental impact
Fri 03 June 2011
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The European Commission is being taken to court by a coalition of NGOs for the third time accused of violating European transparency laws. The action has been taken by the environmental law organisation ClientEarth.
The latest action relates to information about voluntary certification schemes that could play a major part in determining which biofuels are judged to be sustainable. T&E says the lawsuit shows that the Commission is failing to comply with EU ‘access to information’ rules.
ClientEarth, Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE), FERN and Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) filed the lawsuit following the Commission’s refusal to provide access to information in decisions relating to the sustainability of Europe’s biofuels policy.
In 2010 a request for information about organisations that had applied to operate the schemes, and how they are chosen, was rejected by the Commission. This was challenged in December, but despite a deadline of 4 February 2011, the Commission has still not responded.
The Renewable Energy Directive sets a 10 per cent target for use of renewable energy in the transport sector - expected to be met by increased production of biofuels.
The NGO group says that increased pressure on land driven by the surge in demand for biofuels is resulting in increased greenhouse gas emissions as well as threatening vulnerable communities and biodiversity. The sustainability criteria are intended to prevent the most severe environmental impacts by requiring biofuels to protect high carbon stock areas and biodiversity standards set out in the Directive – social impacts are ignored.
James Thornton, ClientEarth CEO, said: “The amount of money at stake over Europe’s biofuels policy is colossal, and so is the potential for environmental devastation. These policies are too important to shield from scrutiny, decision making processes need to be more participatory. We need to know which organisations have applied to run voluntary certification schemes, and how they’ve been chosen, so that we can be certain that they will provide robust and reliable information.”
The LowCVP developed a carbon and sustainability accreditation scheme which was adopted by the UK Government to report on biofuels delivered to the UK market through the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). Biofuels now comprise over 3% of all road fuels delivered to the UK market.
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